Old recipes and cookbooks are a fascinating source of history. The Seattle Times took a look back at its old “Dorothy Neighbors” columns, the nom de plume of their group of home economists who provided recipes and answered the queries of homemakers from 1928 to 1980. They list a sampling of some of naive old questions. The Times used to hold an annual recipe contest, with hundreds of winners. Their test kitchen, a rarity for a newspaper, was used to verify the entries, but that only began in the 1970s. Recipes from past eras were clipped and saved onto index cards and then stored in a large filing cabinet. One drawer is devoted entirely to molded salads. What a treasure trove of recent culinary history. The oldest recipe on file, “Cherry Preserves with Pectin,” is from 1934 and uses 7 cups of sugar and 4 cups of fruit.